Subj : Bink under WIN-XP
To : Peter Knapper
From : Mike Tripp
Date : Sun May 02 2004 08:46 am
Hello Peter!
02 May 04 10:07, Peter Knapper wrote to Mike Luther:
PK> It seems Laptop manufactureres are being PUSHED by M$ into an
PK> environment where there is no native SERIAL port on their
PK> machines. If a user wants one of those, they have to install a
PK> PCMCIA card serial port. The apparent reason for this is that USB
PK> is now seen by M$ for all serial type connections (and forget all
PK> existing serial port H/W out there today!).
The push (and design) of USB has come from an industry consortium of hardware
vendors...not some M$ conspiracy. 9 and 25-pin serial ports, parallel printer
ports, AT- and PS/2-style keyboard ports and mouse ports are all royalty
bearing, patented designs of IBM and each vendor must have some arrangement
with IBM in order to provide them. Besides writing checks to IBM, notebooks
have extra issues with the internal and external real estate required to
support them and the related thermal and power/battery-life impacts. If
anything, waiting for MS to provide proper functional OS support for USB
devices has done more to slow the adoption rate than accelerate it. The
hardware has been around since the Win95/NT4 generation of MS OS.
Any perception of recent urgency on MS's part might not be unrelated to the
fact that they now have a certain small form-factor hardware platform of their
own to peddle, too.<g>
